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This page last updated on 06/15/2017
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| (Fig. 01 |
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| (Fig. 02) |
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| Hike Trailheads: The Bowl of Fire (BoF) is located in the Muddy Mountain Wilderness Area, everything north of the Callville Wash. Everything south and east of the wash is within the boundaries of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. There are actually 3 trail heads one can use to approach the (BoF). Refer to (Fig. 01). (Option 1) If you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle, start at Mile Marker 16 and drive up Callville Wash (Road #54). This leaves you with a relatively short 1/2-mile hike into the “bowl”. (Option 2) Hiking from the mile 18.2 mile marker parking area off Northshore Road, leaves you about a 1.25 mile hike to the “bowl”. (Option 3) Hiking from the trailhead at the 20.6 mile marker parking area, known as the Bowl of Fire North Loop. This loop trail, ending back at the 18.2 trailhead, is almost 8 miles, and is certainly the most difficult. |
05/17/2016 Trip Notes:Today I made my third visit to the Bowl of Fire. On this hike I was accompanied by Blake Smith, Bob Croke and Ron Ziance. The weather was so threatening that we almost cancelled this hike. Unfortunately, even though it never did rain, the dismal overcast prevented us from obtaining any really good pictures. We started today's hike, the yellow line in (Fig. 02), at the trailhead located at the 18.2 mile marker on Northshore Drive (Fig. 02). The picture of the Bowl of Fire area seen in (Fig. 01) was taken looking northwest just as we rounded "hill 851" seen on (Fig. 02). The distance from the trailhead to the Bowl of Fire area is about 1.2 miles. The view from inside the "bowl" in (Fig. 03) is looking southeast, back towards the start of our hike. The yellow arrow in the pictures points to the approximate trailhead location behind "hill 851". Once we reached the 5-6 foot "spill-over" in the middle of the wash, we hiked the hillside to the left behind the area of dark conglomerate seen on the right of (Fig. 03). This route into the "bowl" was a little longer and required us to climb up approximately 50 feet above the wash (Fig. 04). Once we crested the ridge line, we were presented with some very nice views of the area (Figs. 05 & 06) as well as some unique sandstone outcrops (Fig. 07). (con't below)
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| (Fig. 03) |
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| (Fig. 04) |
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| (Fig. 05) |
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| (Fig. 06) |
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| (Fig. 07) |
Trip Notes Continued: As we explored this area, there were several areas where the ground was covered with small "Indian pebbles" caused by hundreds of years of erosion (Fig. 08). Though the vegetation within this area is very sparse, we did fine several examples of
Catclaw Acacia (Acacia-greggii) (Fig. 09) and some
Notch Leaved Phacelia (Phacelia crenulata) (Fig. 10), and
Desert Trumpet (Eriogonum inflatum (Fig. 11), in bloom. Reaching a high spot at the end of our walk (Fig. 12), we climbed back down into the wash and began to retrace out steps back to the trailhead. The total R/T distance for this hike was less than 3 miles. From here we drove a few more miles up the road to the
Redstone Loop Trail/Picnic Area where we had a picnic lunch and captured this picture of a weather carved sandstone elephant (Fig. 13).
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| (Fig. 08) |
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| (Fig. 09) |
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| (Fig. 10) |
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| (Fig. 11) |
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| (Fig. 12) |
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| (Fig. 13) |
